Locations: Yellow players receive Pikachu as their starting Pokemon, but Red/Blue owners can catch multiple Pikachus in Viridian Forest and the Power Plant. Note that there is only one Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow -- and it can't be directly evolved into a Raichu.

This Pokémon naturally learns the following techniques (Red/Blue evolution levels are in parentheses):

Tips: Pikachu is the superstar among its fellow Pokemon. Not only is it a pretty able Electric Pokemon, it got so popular that Nintendo eventually gave the yellow mouse its own Game Boy and N64 games. If you play Pokemon Yellow, you don't have much of a choice and start off with a special little Pikachu (one that gets angry when you store it in a Poke Ball), but that shouldn't stop Blue/Red players from catching a Pikachu of their own early on in the game as well. However, there is a difference between the Yellow version Pokemon and its Blue/Red counterpart. The stats are the same, but Yellow Pikachu is able to learn Tail Whip, Double Team, Slam, Thunderbolt and Lightscreen on its own. Blue/Red Pikachu lacks those techniques but can learn Swift at level 26 (Yellow Pikachu has to learn it from a TM). This gives Yellow players a slight advantage, since they can use the powerful Thunderbolt technique at level 26.

As far as moves go, let Pikachu learn all the major Electric techniques like Thunder Wave, Thunderbolt (replace Thundershock with Thunderbolt at level 26) and Thunder. Swift's a great attack against faster Pokemon that like to Dig or Fly, but Pokemon Stadium players may want to reserve the fourth attack slot for something even better: Surf. To find out how you can teach Pikachu Surf, check out our secrets page . Don't get too attached to Growl or Tail Whip, though. You can safely replace them with better moves like Quick Attack or Thunder.

Pikachu doesn't have very high HP, so your battles should be all about speed. A great way to turn around a battle against a quick enemy is to start off with Thunder Wave. Pikachu really shines when you let it zap Water or Flying Pokemon and it defends well against other Electric Pokemon, but it also has a fatal weak spot. Ground Pokemon are 100% immune to Electric attacks. And as if that wasn't enough, Ground techniques like Dig also tend to knock Pikachu out with one single hit. So whatever you do, don't send a Pikachu into battle with a Ground Pokemon.

Origin: Pikachu is one of the few Pokemon names that has been carried over from the Japanese. In Japanese, "pika" means spark or sparkly -- which describes the electric nature of Pikachu. To make the name match Pikachu's adorable look, its namegivers appended the "cute" version of the verb "to be", which is "dechu" (the regular form is desu) and abbreviated it to "chu". Incidentally, "chu" also means kiss in Japanese. Incidentally, there is also an American rock mouse called "Pika" (it looks kind of like a Guinea Pig), but Nintendo assures us that any similarities are merely coincidental.